The Academy’s Bench Warmer

The brilliant, insightful, and eminently likable kungfuramone is on the job market, and it’s freaking him out a little bit.  To which I have three thoughts:

1) Don’t Panic, because there’s nothing to be done about the history job market.  It probably sucks.  It’s always sucked.  The only thing you can do is work your ass off–write a good dissertation, do some teaching, maybe get an article published–and cross your fingers.  If you’ve got connections or favors, call them in.  But try not think about the state of the job market; doing so only wastes time that you might spend getting something else done.

2) Then again, if KFR is worried, what hope is there for me?  KFR is fucking brilliant and really nice.  If KFR can’t get a job, that either (a) proves that it’s all just a crap shot or (b) bodes ill for the less skilled, like me.  Which brings me to…

3) Back-up plans.  In this area, I think people who have worked outside the academy have an advantage: we know that regular work isn’t the end of the world.  Serve coffee?  Okay.  Computer support?  I guess so.  Sales?  I’d rather not, but it’s a job.  I’ve done shitty work in the past, and I’ll do it again if I have to.  So will KFR; that kid hasn’t been locked in the tower all his life.  But the Straight-Throughs (k-12 -> undergrad -> grad) seem unable to conceptualize doing regular work.  Maybe that’s why I notice younger grad students clutching their pearls more than older grad students.  Except for occasional lapses like KFR’s.

And mine, right now.

As I ate my lunch on Monday, I thought to myself: “Why am I doing this?”  Not, “Why am I eating lunch?”–it was PBJ, chips, cookie, and milk, so duh, I was eating because it’s the perfect meal–but “Why am I busting my ass with all of this work?”  A short list of things I’m trying to accomplish: finish my minor field, prepare for prelims, revise an article, stay up on blog reading/writing (sorry about that, by the way), stay up on journal reading, and teach three classes.  I’m not whining here–this isn’t real work; it’s reading, writing, and teaching, and it’s pretty awesome that I get to spend my time doing it.

But why, exactly, am I doing it?  The “because I love it” routine wasn’t working for me on Monday, because, frankly, on Monday I wasn’t loving it.  Instead, I started to wonder whether I have noble or selfish reasons for doing this.  Noble: to affect positive change in the world, no matter how small (i.e. help a student think critically about the past and thereby make good [frankly, leftist, and that's where things get tricky] decisions in the present].  Selfish: get a tenure-track J-O-B for the stability and sabbatical.  Lately, it seems like I’ve been doing things for the purpose of my career.  Of course, the idea is that if I can establish myself in the profession, then I’ll be able to do that noble stuff.  But neck-deep in work and far from the end of the grad school tunnel, that explanation sometimes just isn’t satisfying.

That’s it.  What, you expected resolution?

Over at The Edge of the American West, Ari Kelman’s giving out a few free tips on dealing with the AHA.  For those on the job market, or headed there soon, it’s helpful.
Some advice as well from PhDinHistory here.

For those who aren’t on the market, the AHA looms ahead, scaring the poo out of weeny little grad students (like me).  Kind of like a 30th/40th/50th birthday.  And like those auspicious milestones, I expect the AHA is not quite as scary as we’ve been led to believe.  In the end it’s an interview for a job, and we grad students should get a grip and deal with it as such.  That being said, the AHA interview does seem like a freak show: hundreds/thousands of candidates corralled into a big room, filing in front of glazed-eyed interview committees, doing their best not to look like the amateurs that we grad students are.  The more I think about it, the more I understand the extent to which our profession’s institutions and traditions create the conditions for utter madness or, at least, the social ineptitude which we historians are so well known for.